


Like A Rolling Stone

by vondrostes



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Bottom Harry, Canon Compliant, Come Marking, Infidelity, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Post-Break Up, Sex Toys, Unreliable Narrator, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 13:38:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20408644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vondrostes/pseuds/vondrostes
Summary: Neither uttered a single word as they listened to the album from start to finish. By the end of it, Nick realised his tea had gone cold in his hand. He’d barely taken a single sip in the hour-plus he’d been sat there, unmoving, transfixed by Harry’s songs—haunted by the knowledge of what had inspired them.





	Like A Rolling Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Rolling Stone interview as well as Harry & Nick's radio silence since Nick started dating Mesh. Not a happy story, the infidelity tag is there for a reason, Nick is not a reliable narrator.
> 
> I usually wait a week to post here after posting things Elsewhere, but decided to whip this one up real quick and make it public because of the interview being released today!
> 
> Twitter: @vondrostes & @vondrostesupd8s  
Tumblr: @vondrostes

Nick had spent all morning feeling like his stomach was about to exit via his mouth. Not just the contents, no, the entire organ—potentially with all eight metres of intestines attached.

He was parked outside a non-descript flat in St. Alban’s, furtively checking the front door every few seconds between scanning the street for any sign of a mob of teen girls should one suddenly appear. It seemed, though, as if Harry had succeeded in maintaining a low profile while in London this time around. It was mid-morning, and so far Nick hadn’t seen a single person under the age of fifty wandering the streets outside the building Harry had given him the address for when they’d discussed having this meeting.

Nick was just about to throw his dignity to the wayside and send Harry a text demanding to know where he was when the door to the flat finally opened, revealing a bundled up figure, hardly recognisable aside from the distinctive cream-coloured loafers that Nick despised with every fibre of his being.

Harry casually sauntered up the drive to the side of Nick’s car and opened the door with a cardigan-draped hand, his trousers swishing loudly as he swung himself up into the passenger seat without uttering a single word. Once he was sat down, he pulled off his hat and sunglasses, tucking them into the front pocket of the overly large designer bag that had been hanging off one shoulder as he made his way over to the car.

Nick stared at him with a furrowed brow for a moment before starting up the car again and setting off down the street. He couldn’t think of what to say; Harry had been the one who suggested they do this, and Nick had been expecting him to shoulder the burden in terms of making conversation. Before Harry’s text a few weeks ago, they hadn’t spoken to each other in more than a year.

“You can hook up your phone to the stereo whenever you’re ready,” Nick finally managed, his mouth feeling drier than it had ever felt before, even more so than that time in Spain on the beach when Nick had forgotten to drink anything all day and Harry had managed to trick him into sipping a mouthful of sea water just so Nick would chase him down the shoreline and tackle him into the sand.

Harry’s reply came in the form of his quietest, most subdued voice. “I thought we’d have a chat first,” he said.

Nick had to force himself not to turn and look at Harry as he responded. “About what?” But he couldn’t hold out long.

He glanced over just in time to catch Harry shaking his head as he leaned in to type something on the GPS. “Just drive,” he said simply.

Nick took a cursory glance at the final destination Harry had plugged in before taking a left at the end of the street as directed. Aldbury. What the fuck was in Aldbury? Maybe Harry was taking him out to the woods to bury his body. With how poorly their meeting was going so far, Nick wasn’t sure he wouldn’t prefer that outcome.

The address Harry had provided ended up leading to a secluded cottage out near the Ashridge Estate. If the building hadn’t been so well upkept, Nick might have seriously feared for his life, because once they pulled into the tiny gravel drive outside the house, they found themselves surrounded on all sides by a thick copse of trees, not a single hint of civilisation within sight.

“I rented the place for the day,” Harry explained as they climbed out of the car and walked up to the front stoop, where Harry leaned down to retrieve a key from under a loose brick behind a flowerpot.

Some security system, Nick thought to himself. “It’s…cosy,” Nick commented upon walking inside to find a compact but fairly modern living space inside. The oldest part of the décor appeared to be the massive brick fireplace in the centre of the sitting room, its façade cracked and faded presumably from years of use.

“I thought we could do with some privacy,” Harry explained. He set his back down in front of the interior doorway—leading to a bedroom, Nick assumed—before turning into the kitchenette in the corner and pulling out a kettle right off the bat.

Nick sat down on one of the sofas while Harry busied himself with making tea for them both. After he’d finished and handed Nick his cuppa, Harry turned around to retrieve his bag, pulling out a plain black record sleeve encased in plastic. He didn’t make eye contact with Nick as he moved over to the corner of the room, where a record player was sat out on a small table next to a lamp.

“Bit pretentious for a sophomore album, innit?” Nick said once he realised what Harry was up to.

Harry ignored him as he put the record on and hit play before retreating to the other sofa, where he sat down and stared into the corner with his knees tucked up under his chin as the music began to fill the room.

Neither uttered a single word as they listened to the album from start to finish. By the end of it, Nick realised his tea had gone cold in his hand. He’d barely taken a single sip in the hour-plus he’d been sat there, unmoving, transfixed by Harry’s songs—haunted by the knowledge of what had inspired them.

Nick could feel Harry’s eyes on him as he stared into his teacup, as though the swirling liquid inside would provide him with the right thing to say now that silence had descended upon them once more.

“Did you hate it?” Harry asked in a small voice.

Nick couldn’t bring himself to answer right away. Finally, he lifted his eyes to stare out the window past Harry’s head, where the trees around the cottage were swaying slowly in the wind. “Was that Rolling Stone interview about me?” he found himself asking. “Or were you really that broken up about a girl you slept with less than a dozen times?”

Harry’s expression didn’t change when Nick shifted his gaze to meet his eyes at last. “Would you rather it have been about her?” he asked in an even tone.

No, Nick didn’t want that either, but he certainly didn’t want to admit as much, especially not while Harry was staring him down with a cool, expressionless face. “It was a clever move,” he deflected instead, “getting Tom to run interference for you with that bit.”

Harry shrugged. “I wouldn’t have minded being perfectly honest about what really happened, but I figured you wouldn’t want the army of angry fans parked outside your front door. Camille said she didn’t mind the attention.”

“Right,” Nick replied sharply. “Because it has nothing to do with you wanting to keep fooling half your fans into thinking you’re actually straight.”

Harry’s only reaction was the slight shift of his eyebrows upward, by only a centimetre or two, barely noticeable even with all of Nick’s attention focussed on every minute change in his face. “Is that really what you think I’m doing?” Harry asked.

Nick gripped the arm of the sofa even tighter, bracing himself to march straight out of the cottage and back to his car. He’d leave Harry stranded in Aldbury if he had to. “I just don’t understand why you won’t say something about it,” he shot back.

“Why should I have to?” Harry retorted just as quickly.

Nick couldn’t keep a lid on his anger anymore. “Because that’s the fucking world we live in, Harry,” he practically shouted as he stood up, realising too late that he didn’t know what his intentions were with the movement. He turned, heading into the kitchenette and bracing himself against the sink, hoping desperately that the extra two metres of distance between himself and Harry would help him breathe just a little bit better. “I had to do it,” Nick continued, voice tight, “Lil Nas X had to fucking do it, everyone has to do it, because that’s the way things are.” He paused, just long enough to take a breath. “But not you, eh? You get to coast on the trendiness of sexual ambiguity without confirming or denying anything at all, and the whole world loves you for it.”

Harry glanced down at his feet, still with the same blankly neutral expression shielding his face. “I don’t understand why you’re so angry about all this when you’re the one who left,” he replied.

That had Nick floundering. “I only left because—we’ve been over this.” Nick didn’t want to have that argument again. It had been ugly enough the first time around.

Harry was silent for nearly a minute before responding, still with his eyes trained firmly on the floor. “I thought this would go differently,” he murmured, as though speaking more to himself than Nick.

Nick couldn’t help but reply anyway. “Why?”

Harry finally lifted his head, and there was something heavier behind his eyes now that hadn’t been there before. “I dunno,” he admitted, “I just thought…. You seem so happy now with Mesh; I thought it’d be easier to go back to the way things were before.”

“There was no ‘before’,” Nick replied automatically.

The truth of it—of them, their whole sordid story—was that Nick had been enamoured by Harry from the very first time they’d met, before it was even acceptable by Nick’s own standards to be the least bit interested in the wisp of a boy that Harry had been back then. And he’d shoved all that down deep inside himself and done his very best to be Harry’s friend and nothing more. And when that finally imploded into something else, as though ending up in bed together had been inevitable from the start, Nick had managed to convince himself that he could settle down and be happy.

But that life wasn’t enough for Harry, who was still young and restless and filled with a burning desire to experience everything and every_one_, and that’s when Nick had realised that _he_ wasn’t enough for Harry, even though Harry had been more than enough for him.

“Maybe we should cancel the promo stuff,” Nick blurted out without thinking.

“If you think that’s best,” Harry replied placidly, like it didn’t matter to him one way or the other.

That set Nick off again, and this time, he marched straight out of the kitchenette and into Harry’s bubble, grabbing him by the hair with one hand and yanking hard, so that Harry was forced to stare directly up into Nick’s face.

“What happened to being petty and jealous and _pathetic_?” Nick demanded.

“I can be pathetic if you want me to,” Harry told him with a demure expression.

Something about it struck a chord within Nick as he gazed down at Harry’s upturned face, feeling unpleasantly reminded of the way their current position had often been a precursor to something else. When Nick felt his prick twinge in his trousers, making a valiant and Pavlovian attempt to get hard, Nick let go of Harry’s hair and stepped away quickly, turning round just to make sure that Harry couldn’t see how red he was getting.

Nick paced for a minute behind the sofa, trying to calm down. That’s when Harry said it.

“Safe sex.”

Nick turned, his eyes wide. “What?”

“Safe sex,” Harry calmly repeated.

Nick felt all the blood abruptly draining from his face as he realised what Harry was doing: invoking the code phrase they used to use for long-distance sex, because of Keith Haring shirt Nick had bought Harry years ago as a joke, not realising just how attached Harry would get to the bloody thing.

“Here?” Nick asked dumbly. It shouldn’t have been his first response given the fact that he was still very much in a committed, monogamous relationship with a boyfriend he was planning to propose to in the near future, but for some reason, he couldn’t make himself form the words to politely turn Harry down. Part of his brain was telling him that if all they did was watch each other get off, he wouldn’t be putting Mesh at risk of anything, and therefore it didn’t count—but the more rational part knew that was a poor excuse, one his guilt-ridden heart would never accept.

And yet.

“There’s a bedroom,” Harry replied, shaking his head.

Nick just stared at him for several seconds before slowly nodding. He followed Harry through the door his bag had been leant against and into the bedroom, where Harry dropped the bag down next to the bed before beginning to shed his clothes.

Harry climbed onto the bed in just a plain white vest and dark blue briefs, his face expectant as he stared up at Nick, who had no choice but to climb on with him.

Nick was careful to keep his distance as he sat down with his back against the headboard, legs spread enough to be comfortable as he unzipped his fly and pulled out his semi-hard cock. Harry glanced down at it with something akin to hunger in his eyes, but Nick had resolved to turn him down if Harry attempted to get his mouth anywhere near him.

Thankfully, Harry seemed to be on the same page regarding their encounter, and he stayed on his half of the bed as he slowly and deliberately drew the vest over his head before tossing it into the corner. When he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his pants, however, he paused, looking up at Nick with a strange expression on his face.

“Close your eyes,” Harry told him.

Nick obeyed without question, still with a fist around his cock, slowly pumping as he listened to Harry’s rustling. He tried to piece together in his mind what Harry was doing, but it had been ages since they’d last done this. Nick couldn’t visualise it properly. It didn’t help that Harry’s appearance seemed to change like the seasons; he was practically a different person now. It was only Nick who had stayed the same.

After a few minutes, Nick finally heard Harry’s breathing start to quicken as the bed settled under his wait again. When a short gasp escaped Harry’s lips, Nick gripped his cock that much tighter and sped up the movement of his hand.

“The first time I got fucked after you left,” Harry said out of nowhere between panting breaths, his voice as loud as a gunshot tearing through the blanket of silence, “I cried my fucking eyes out.”

Nick opened his eyes to find Harry laid out flat on his back, his legs curled up nearly behind his own head. There was a dildo in his hand, and that dildo was buried in his arse, almost up to the hilt. As Nick watched, Harry slowly fucked the dildo in and out of himself, his eyes heavy-lidded as he stared up at Nick.

“Did you plan this?” Nick asked, confused and unable to think of any other reason that Harry would have brought sex supplies with him in addition to a copy of his unreleased album.

Harry shook his head, his hand stilling, and then he opened his mouth with a slight frown marring his features. “I was hoping…something might happen,” he admitted in a breathy tone.

Nick screwed his eyes shut again, mentally flagellating himself now for doing this when he knew full-well that as soon as he went home to Mesh, he’d tell him exactly what he’d done, regardless of the consequences. And the worst part is that Nick was fully aware that he wasn’t doing this because he thought he and Harry were getting back together. He knew they weren’t. He didn’t even want to. But some part of him needed this, needed the closure, needed to come—

Nick’s eyes flew open as he leaned forward onto his knees, his fist moving faster as he watched Harry fuck himself, the way they used to when they were on different sides of the world, unable to touch each other, the same way they weren’t allowed to touch now. It didn’t matter that they’d already crossed a line; Nick would rather die than be inside Harry right now—and wasn’t that something? Before the first time they fucked, Nick thought it would literally kill him if they never did.

Another, more masochistic, part of Nick was screaming at him to do the opposite, to bury himself inside Harry raw and rut away again and again without stopping until they fused together into a single person, because then, Harry wouldn’t be able to ever leave again. But he couldn’t.

Nick’s eyes fluttered closed for a beat as he felt himself getting closer to coming. He couldn’t. He shouldn’t.

Harry came first, his delicate fingers shoving the dildo deeper inside himself until it nearly vanished as his cock spurted onto his belly, flexing weakly with each pulse as he let out an unattractive grunt before going limp.

Nick was close now, so close he felt nauseous with it, but maybe that was just the guilt and anger mixing inside him until it became a poison swirling around in his gut. He stared intently at Harry’s hand, his gaze fixed as Harry slid the dildo out to reveal a wet, gaping hole, that under other circumstances, Nick wouldn’t have been able to keep his mouth off of.

A perverse thought crossed Nick’s mind, tugging a sinister smile onto his face as he wanked himself furiously. He was staring into the abyss; the abyss was winking back.

“Can I—?” Nick found himself asking without knowing where the question had even come from. It wasn’t fair to even ask. “Can I come inside you?”

Harry’s eyes widened by degrees, and then he nodded, solemnly, reaching down with both hands to keep himself open as Nick shuffled closer.

Even now, Nick made sure that not a single centimetre of their skin was touching as he lined himself up with Harry’s hole, his hand working faster and faster until it hurt—and then he was coming, his semen spilling into Harry’s gaping hole with enough force that Harry flinched bodily, the second stream missing and leaving a white streak against his taint and arsecheeks.

Nick fell back against the pillows with a heavy sigh. He pressed his fists against his eyelids, applying pressure until he saw fireworks. He wished he could take the last hour back, his stomach churning like when he’d been a kid watching fucked up porn he never should have been exposed to, the revulsion setting in like a mountain of bricks now that the endorphins were being flushed from his system. It was all of that, and it was a thousand times worse.

It was a few minutes before Nick managed to snap out of it, and finally he climbed off the bed in search of the loo so he could make an attempt at cleaning up. Harry was still lying at the foot of the bed where Nick had left him. He didn’t move even when Nick walked by, and he was still there when Nick returned.

Nick was sickly satisfied by that, by the thought of his come lingering inside Harry like a permanent stain he could never wash out, _ruining _him for anyone else. He headed for the door, pausing with his hand on the knob as he turned to look back at Harry one last time.

“I think the album’s good,” Nick told him while Harry stared back blankly. “I’m looking forward to seeing how it does commercially.”

Harry blinked twice before lifting himself up onto his elbows to meet Nick’s eyes. “Thank you,” he replied quietly.

Nick nodded, swallowing hard as he pushed the door open a few centimetres further. “I’ll let someone at the station know they need to give your slots to someone else,” he said around the hard lump at the back of his throat.

Harry gave a weak nod and said nothing.

“Good luck,” Nick told him before walking through the door. He didn’t give Harry a chance to respond. If this was the last time they were ever going to speak to each other, he wanted to be the one who got the last word.


End file.
